A Day Off-Plan

Today did not go as planned.  The plan for today was to leave Salzburg and head for Zurich, Switzerland.  We were supposed to drive along the northern part of Austria and Switzerland and into Zurich.  Easy enough!

Well, we decided to do laundry first after checking out of our hotel.  We were waiting for our clothes to dry and I was doing my Happy Color on my IPad and it just popped into my head that I left my jewelry in the hotel safe.  I have been so worried I would do that and today I did.  Luckily, we had decided to do laundry so we hadn’t left town.  Not only that but when I called the hotel, the housekeepers had not cleaned our room yet, so it had not been discovered.  Whew! Kevin was able to run over there and retrieve it.

In all our travels lately, I have learned that it is best to wear the jewelry I want for the whole trip and don’t bring any extra with me.  That works out really well because it’s all figured out, no thinking about what to wear and the biggest thing is no worrying about what to do with your extra jewelry to keep it safe.  But I went off script with this trip because it was 6 weeks.  I thought I might want to change it out.  And you know, I haven’t.  I have been wearing the same stuff since I left.  So lesson learned.  Stick with the plan and only bring what you are wearing when you leave!  

I would love to hear from anyone that travels, what is your jewelry policy?

That crisis was averted, now on to THE PLAN for the day.  So we took off driving and punched in the address for our hotel in Zurich.  GPS had a different plan, she took us up into Germany and across until we were north of Zurich and then dropped us down into Zurich.  Germany is not one of the countries we were planning to visit on this trip.  Now we are at 7 countries in 6 weeks. So we considered changing the road plan by entering other cities along the way to keep her down in Austria and Switzerland but decided “what the heck, we will check out Germany”.

But first, we had to think about driving in Germany.  Portugal, Spain and Italy had toll roads that stopped us and made us pay toll often.  We probably spent hundreds in each of those countries.  Austria has a different approach.  They require everyone to purchase a “vignette” to drive the toll roads in Austria.  Kind of a one-time toll charge.  No sweat, we purchased one right before we entered Austria and all was good.  So I googled driving in Germany and I got lots of contradicting information.  

Germany has the autobahn system.  There are autobahns all over Germany.  They are federal controlled highways that have “suggested” speed limits but it is not illegal to go whatever speed you wish.  Crazy right?  The law is that you stay to the right except to pass and leave the left lane open for the people that want to fly.  Does it cost money to drive on the autobahns?  That was my question.  Apparently, it costs if you are a truck over 7.5 tons but not if you are just a car.  The autobahns are free.  We learned this by stopping at a truck stop and asking if we need a vignette to drive in Germany.  The answer is no, but we will need one for Switzerland.  So we picked one up for Switzerland and felt relieved to be in compliance. 

We don’t want the gestapo coming after us.

Next, it began to rain and GPS wanted to reroute us to avoid a thunderstorm coming up ahead.  So to be safe we decided to take the alternate route.  What a stroke of luck that was!  The alternate route took us into the countryside of Germany, rolling hills, small towns and some residential neighborhoods.  Not only were we seeing a country we were not planning to see, we were getting a tour through the countryside with a lot of the old time German style homes and restaurants.

It was like something or someone else had control of our day and we were just along for the ride.  So we went with it and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves!

Nutze den tag!  And make the most of it!